Seattle City Light details storm response, cites aging poles and high undergrounding costs after 'bomb cyclone' outages

Seattle City Light leaders updated the Lake Forest Park City Council on Jan. 9 about the utility’s response to the recent "bomb cyclone" that left portions of the community without power for several days and described next steps on infrastructure investment and communications.

The utility’s general manager, Dawn Lindell, told the council the storm produced “extreme weather conditions that caused extensive damage to our infrastructure,” and that crews prioritized critical facilities and large blocks of customers while working through access and downed-tree issues. "At the peak, which was roughly 11 p.m. on [Dec. 19], we were at a 114,000 outages," said Mike Haines, Seattle City Light’s chief operating officer.

The presentation focused on the causes of extended outages in Lake Forest Park and the region and on the utility’s asset condition. Andy Strong, the utility’s environmental engineering and project delivery officer, said the feeders serving Lake Forest Park are relatively new and that the primary vulnerability is wooden poles: "Of [City Light's] 92,000 wooden utility poles, about 1,850 serve this region," Strong said, and he added the utility has 18 poles in the worst condition category (P1) in the area and another 172 that need replacement within three to five years.

Why it matters

City Light officials said most unscheduled outages in the region stemmed from trees and vegetation striking overhead lines; in the Lake Forest Park area they estimated roughly 60% of outages were caused by trees and branches, 30% by equipment failures and about 10% by vehicle strikes and pole fires. That mix, officials said, informs where to focus spending: pole replacement, vegetation management, and selective undergrounding.

Cost and scope of undergrounding

The utility provided figures on the costs and tradeoffs of moving distribution lines underground. "We're using about $6,300,000 a mile to underground a system and overhead is somewhere in the $700,000 to $800,000 figure," Strong said. He noted undergrounding can be markedly more reliable in the first 10–15 years but becomes harder and slower to repair when faults occur, and that City Light has about 300 miles of direct-buried cable more than 60 years old that will require replacement. Strong told the council the replacement program for buried cable could exceed $2 billion.

Lindell and other City Light leaders defended restoration prioritization and mutual aid decisions while acknowledging problems with public communications. Lindell said crews focused first on transmission and substations needed to energize large areas, then on large feeder blocks where they could restore thousands of customers at once. "We made the call after mutual aid," Haines said, explaining crews were brought in from Avista and Tacoma Power to help with major restoration tasks.

Communication and technology problems

Council members repeatedly pressed City Light on its public-facing outage map and customer communications. Lindell and Haines said the utility’s new outage-management and IVR systems were overwhelmed during the event and produced inaccurate information for callers at times. Haines said the utility’s after-action review identified communications and damage-assessment capabilities as priorities for near-term improvement: "We learned a lot about our outage management system... this event definitely overwhelmed it," he said.

City Light said it plans to add digital notification options, including opt-in text messaging, and to hire a chief information officer; Dawn Lindell told council members the utility will finalize CIO hiring and other technology upgrades in the coming year.

Rates and funding

Lindell presented rate information as part of the context for investment needs. She said the systemwide average proposed rate increase is 5.4%, with residential increases in the Lake Forest Park area of 4.1% this year and 4.8% next year. The utility indicated it will use a mix of rate revenue and bond-funded capital to pay for accelerated asset replacement and technology investments.

Council concerns and follow-up

Council members repeatedly pressed City Light on specific local issues: pole condition maps, whether school-bus routes were considered in neighborhood planning, and coordination with telecommunications companies that share poles. Multiple council members said the utility’s outward-facing communications raised residents’ expectations and then failed to deliver accurate restoration times.

City Light officials said they will provide follow-up data, including pole-condition maps and more targeted information about planned work in Lake Forest Park, and they described a near-term plan to improve damage assessment, communications and to accelerate certain pole and underground transformer replacements.

Ending

City Light officials closed by saying the utility will use the after-action review to accelerate training for damage assessment crews, to improve public communications and to propose capital plans for the next budget cycle. Council members asked to be consulted as the utility prepares specific project lists and budget requests that will affect Lake Forest Park residents.

"We could probably have improved our performance by about 24 hours," Haines said when asked what the utility would do differently next time; Lindell and other leaders said they would seek to shorten response times where feasible and will pursue both operational and capital changes to reduce the chance of similar prolonged outages.